Aw, heck, let's do it Letterman-style: The Top 10 possible Columbus Blue Jackets "internal conversations" about a Sheldon Souray for Mike Commodore trade, from the home office in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta:

...or...

10. "Sheldon Souray's agent called. Said that Sheldon would love to play for a team like Columbus."

9. "Souray for Commodore? Who came up with that crazy idea? Don Cherry or Pierre MacGuire?"

8. "It's Friday, so let's break out the table and play 'trade a vet roulette.' Today's Blue Jacket is Mike Commodore. Spin the wheel....and....Sheldon Souray? Eww...that sucks. Spin again! Hey, Boyd landed on Duncan Keith! Let's get Bowman on the line, you know, for giggles."

7. "No, MacFarland, I wanted a viable candidate for Commodore. Not Sheldon Souray..."

2. "Portzline called again about Souray for Commodore? Tell him we're not interested."

1. "Kevin Dineen called. He says that Sheldon Souray should be on the CBJ roster - would be much better than Mike Commodore for his system."

[UPDATE: TSN's Bob McKenzie offered the following Tweet: "EDM and CBJ haven't spoken on Souray in more than a week. Teams will talk again at end of camp after CBJ gets better feel on its roster." OK, so we have confirmation that the two teams have talked. How hard was that?]

5 comments:

This bloggers vs. MSM is a load of crap. You have no more idea if this trade is based in reality than your readers do. Still, I enjoy your style, so I keep coming back. I dont' do it for news, you can't provide any.

Look, if someone, somewhere with any position of authority suggested that Commodore for Souray was a viable option, I wouldn't have so much fun with it. But it's one person - a reporter - who has decided to make a crusade out of the idea. That same reporter does a very good job at...well...reporting actual news, so he is respected by The Hockey Fraternity. As such, a rumor that he promotes is automatically worthy of repeating/reprinting - whereas a rumor that you or I float is dismissed as silly. But it's still one guy, just like you or me, saying, "Wouldn't that be a great trade?"

As for newsworthiness, I tend to agree. To the best of my knowledge, my blog has only scooped the Dispatch on one or two occasions. Of course, there was no attribution, which I expect from an outlet that is scrambling to continue to hold onto its dwindling subscriber base. But you're largely right, I'm not a news source and really don't want to be one. I am a commenter, an armchair analyst. And I fully intend to keep it that way.

If news items drop in my lap, I'll pass them along. But I'm certainly not out there looking for news to break. You'd have to pay me to do that...

When you contend that the Souray/Commie proposal is a one-man crusade, do you totally discount AP's report that it has been discussed by the Jackets? Do you really believe he's just making shit up to sell papers? What would that do to the credibility you admit he has, nationally?

In any case, I'm a regular visitor, here, and will continue to stop by, daily. I like what you do, wether I agree with you all the time, or not.

Pete, your reply is that of a mature individual. Thanks. I'm glad you like my work and promise you that as long as I have this blog, I'll write it to my standards and no one else's. That you can appreciate without automatically agreeing -- that's wonderful. Wish we had more people like you in the world.

As to why I contend that which I do, I think a few things are in play:

1. Portzline is a very very good beat reporter. He gets good scoops and reports them with little (at least for a sportswriter) bias. Where he gets off-track is when he starts trying to play general manager. He did it for almost the entire off-season with the Dineen hype, and now it's Commodore for Souray. His effectiveness with the former allows him to get away with the latter, at least in the eyes of The Hockey Fraternity.

2. As the linked writers point out, it is very likely that the CBJ did have at least a cursory conversation about Souray throughout his soap opera with Edmonton management. In fact, I'll take it a step farther -- they would not be doing their jobs if they didn't have such conversations! However, conversations are not trade talks...and the fact that ZERO is coming out of Edmonton on this (other than reporting that Portzline is rumoring) pretty much tells you that while the Dispatch is trying to fan some flames, they can't get a fire going.

3. Like a good Letterman Top 10, I tried to weave in some serious and semi-serious with the silly. Note that numbers 10, 5 and 3 are all pretty straight explanations of how an internal conversation could take place without anything further developing. There actually are more plausible explanations in the list, but they are shrouded in goofy humor.